Chapter 13

It was not until the night of our first day on the
south bank of the river that we discovered the Fire
People. What must have been a band of wandering
hunters went into camp not far from the tree in which
Lop-Ear and I had elected to roost for the night. The
voices of the Fire People at first alarmed us, but
later, when darkness had come, we were attracted by the
fire. We crept cautiously and silently from tree to
tree till we got a good view of the scene.

In an open space among the trees, near to the river,
the fire was burning. About it were half a dozen
Fire-Men. Lop-Ear clutched me suddenly, and I could
feel him tremble. I looked more closely, and saw the
wizened little old hunter who had shot Broken-Tooth out
of the tree years before. When he got up and walked
about, throwing fresh wood upon the fire, I saw that he
limped with his crippled leg. Whatever it was, it was
a permanent injury. He seemed more dried up and
wizened than ever, and the hair on his face was quite
gray.

The other hunters were young men. I noted, lying near
them on the ground, their bows and arrows, and I knew
the weapons for what they were. The Fire-Men wore
animal skins around their waists and across their
shoulders. Their arms and legs, however, were bare,
and they wore no footgear. As I have said before, they
were not quite so hairy as we of the Folk. They did
not have large heads, and between them and the Folk
there was very little difference in the degree of the
slant of the head back from the eyes.

They were less stooped than we, less springy in their
movements. Their backbones and hips and knee-joints
seemed more rigid. Their arms were not so long as ours
either, and I did not notice that they ever balanced
themselves when they walked, by touching the ground on
either side with their hands. Also, their muscles were
more rounded and symmetrical than ours, and their faces
were more pleasing. Their nose orifices opened
downward; likewise the bridges of their noses were more
developed, did not look so squat nor crushed as ours.
Their lips were less flabby and pendent, and their
eye-teeth did not look so much like fangs. However,
they were quite as thin-hipped as we, and did not weigh
much more. Take it all in all, they were less different
from us than were we from the Tree People. Certainly,
all three kinds were related, and not so remotely
related at that.

The fire around which they sat was especially
attractive. Lop-Ear and I sat for hours, watching the
flames and smoke. It was most fascinating when fresh
fuel was thrown on and showers of sparks went flying
upward. I wanted to come closer and look at the fire,
but there was no way. We were crouching in the forks
of a tree on the edge of the open space, and we did not
dare run the risk of being discovered.

The Fire-Men squatted around the fire and slept with
their heads bowed forward on their knees. They did not
sleep soundly. Their ears twitched in their sleep, and
they were restless. Every little while one or another
got up and threw more wood upon the fire. About the
circle of light in the forest, in the darkness beyond,
roamed hunting animals. Lop-Ear and I could tell them
by their sounds. There were wild dogs and a hyena, and
for a time there was a great yelping and snarling that
awakened on the instant the whole circle of sleeping
Fire-Men.

Once a lion and a lioness stood beneath our tree and
gazed out with bristling hair and blinking eyes. The
lion licked his chops and was nervous with eagerness,
as if he wanted to go forward and make a meal. But the
lioness was more cautious. It was she that discovered
us, and the pair stood and looked up at us, silently,
with twitching, scenting nostrils. Then they growled,
looked once again at the fire, and turned away into the
forest.

For a much longer time Lop-Ear and I remained and
watched. Now and again we could hear the crashing of
heavy bodies in the thickets and underbrush, and from
the darkness of the other side, across the circle, we
could see eyes gleaming in the firelight. In the
distance we heard a lion roar, and from far off came
the scream of some stricken animal, splashing and
floundering in a drinking-place. Also, from the river,
came a great grunting of rhinoceroses.

In the morning, after having had our sleep, we crept
back to the fire. It was still smouldering, and the
Fire-Men were gone. We made a circle through the
forest to make sure, and then we ran to the fire. I
wanted to see what it was like, and between thumb and
finger I picked up a glowing coal. My cry of pain and
fear, as I dropped it, stampeded Lop-Ear into the
trees, and his flight frightened me after him.

The next time we came back more cautiously, and we
avoided the glowing coals. We fell to imitating the
Fire-Men. We squatted down by the fire, and with heads
bent forward on our knees, made believe to sleep. Then
we mimicked their speech, talking to each other in
their fashion and making a great gibberish. I
remembered seeing the wizened old hunter poke the fire
with a stick. I poked the fire with a stick, turning
up masses of live coals and clouds of white ashes.
This was great sport, and soon we were coated white
with the ashes.

It was inevitable that we should imitate the Fire-Men
in replenishing the fire. We tried it first with small
pieces of wood. It was a success. The wood flamed up
and crackled, and we danced and gibbered with delight.
Then we began to throw on larger pieces of wood. We
put on more and more, until we had a mighty fire. We
dashed excitedly back and forth, dragging dead limbs
and branches from out the forest. The flames soared
higher and higher, and the smoke-column out-towered the
trees. There was a tremendous snapping and crackling
and roaring. It was the most monumental work we had
ever effected with our hands, and we were proud of it.
We, too, were Fire-Men, we thought, as we danced there,
white gnomes in the conflagration.

The dried grass and underbrush caught fire, but we did
not notice it. Suddenly a great tree on the edge of
the open space burst into flames.

We looked at it with startled eyes. The heat of it
drove us back. Another tree caught, and another, and
then half a dozen. We were frightened. The monster
had broken loose. We crouched down in fear, while the
fire ate around the circle and hemmed us in. Into
Lop-Ear's eyes came the plaintive look that always
accompanied incomprehension, and I know that in my eyes
must have been the same look. We huddled, with our
arms around each other, until the heat began to reach
us and the odor of burning hair was in our nostrils.
Then we made a dash of it, and fled away westward
through the forest, looking back and laughing as we
ran.

By the middle of the day we came to a neck of land,
made, as we afterward discovered, by a great curve of
the river that almost completed a circle. Right across
the neck lay bunched several low and partly wooded
hills. Over these we climbed, looking backward at the
forest which had become a sea of flame that swept
eastward before a rising wind. We continued to the
west, following the river bank, and before we knew it
we were in the midst of the abiding-place of the Fire
People.

This abiding-place was a splendid strategic selection.
It was a peninsula, protected on three sides by the
curving river. On only one side was it accessible by
land. This was the narrow neck of the peninsula, and
here the several low hills were a natural obstacle.
Practically isolated from the rest of the world, the
Fire People must have here lived and prospered for a
long time. In fact, I think it was their prosperity
that was responsible for the subsequent migration that
worked such calamity upon the Folk. The Fire People
must have increased in numbers until they pressed
uncomfortably against the bounds of their habitat.
They were expanding, and in the course of their
expanding they drove the Folk before them, and settled
down themselves in the caves and occupied the territory
that we had occupied.

But Lop-Ear and I little dreamed of all this when we
found ourselves in the Fire People's stronghold. We
had but one idea, and that was to get away, though we
could not forbear humoring our curiosity by peeping out
upon the village. For the first time we saw the women
and children of the Fire People. The latter ran for
the most part naked, though the former wore skins of
wild animals.

The Fire People, like ourselves, lived in caves. The
open space in front of the caves sloped down to the
river, and in the open space burned many small fires.
But whether or not the Fire People cooked their food, I
do not know. Lop-Ear and I did not see them cook. Yet
it is my opinion that they surely must have performed
some sort of rude cookery. Like us, they carried water
in gourds from the river. There was much coming and
going, and loud cries made by the women and children.
The latter played about and cut up antics quite in the
same way as did the children of the Folk, and they more
nearly resembled the children of the Folk than did the
grown Fire People resemble the grown Folk.

Lop-Ear and I did not linger long. We saw some of the
part-grown boys shooting with bow and arrow, and we
sneaked back into the thicker forest and made our way
to the river. And there we found a catamaran, a real
catamaran, one evidently made by some Fire-Man. The
two logs were small and straight, and were lashed
together by means of tough roots and crosspieces of
wood.

This time the idea occurred simultaneously to us. We
were trying to escape out of the Fire People's
territory. What better way than by crossing the river
on these logs? We climbed on board and shoved off. A
sudden something gripped the catamaran and flung it
downstream violently against the bank. The abrupt
stoppage almost whipped us off into the water. The
catamaran was tied to a tree by a rope of twisted
roots. This we untied before shoving off again.

By the time we had paddled well out into the current,
we had drifted so far downstream that we were in full
view of the Fire People's abiding-place. So occupied
were we with our paddling, our eyes fixed upon the
other bank, that we knew nothing until aroused by a
yell from the shore. We looked around. There were the
Fire People, many of them, looking at us and pointing
at us, and more were crawling out of the caves. We sat
up to watch, and forgot all about paddling. There was
a great hullabaloo on the shore. Some of the Fire-Men
discharged their bows at us, and a few of the arrows
fell near us, but the range was too great.

It was a great day for Lop-Ear and me. To the east the
conflagration we had started was filling half the sky
with smoke. And here we were, perfectly safe in the
middle of the river, encircling the Fire People's
stronghold. We sat and laughed at them as we dashed
by, swinging south, and southeast to east, and even to
northeast, and then east again, southeast and south and
on around to the west, a great double curve where the
river nearly tied a knot in itself.

As we swept on to the west, the Fire People far behind,
a familiar scene flashed upon our eyes.

It was the great drinking-place, where we had wandered
once or twice to watch the circus of the animals when
they came down to drink. Beyond it, we knew, was the
carrot patch, and beyond that the caves and the
abiding-place of the horde. We began to paddle for the
bank that slid swiftly past, and before we knew it we
were down upon the drinking-places used by the horde.
There were the women and children, the water carriers,
a number of them, filling their gourds. At sight of us
they stampeded madly up the run-ways, leaving behind
them a trail of gourds they had dropped.

We landed, and of course we neglected to tie up the
catamaran, which floated off down the river. Right
cautiously we crept up a run-way. The Folk had all
disappeared into their holes, though here and there we
could see a face peering out at us. There was no sign
of Red-Eye. We were home again. And that night we
slept in our own little cave high up on the cliff,
though first we had to evict a couple of pugnacious
youngsters who had taken possession.